Christmas as it ought not to be
by Igenlode Wordsmith
Summary: Raoul had never enjoyed Christmas very much. Leroux-based.
1. The boy in the library

**Chapter 1: The boy in the library**

* * *

 _(Author's note: Raoul's December birthday has been part of my head-canon since_ _ **The Sons of Éléonore**_ _— it helps the chronology to fit. But I'd never actually thought about the other implications..._

 _For the title of this story, I am indebted to EMK81's chapter "Weihnachten, wie es nicht sein sollte". Chapter 1 is an entry for the Very Phantom Christmas One-shot contest.)_

* * *

It was a cold, grey afternoon outside, and the neatly-clipped trees in their huge pots — each almost as tall as the boy who stood gazing out at them through the long windows — stretched away from the chateau towards an empty fountain that held only a thin layer of ice. The hands of the clock on the mantelpiece behind him, with its hurrying uneven tick, showed a little less than half-past three, but shadows were already gathering in the corners, and soon it would be too dark for the picture-book that lay abandoned on the hearthrug where he had left it, in front of an empty grate.

The window rattled a little on its hinges, and Raoul de Chagny pressed the tip of an upturned nose against the cold, smooth pane, feeling the draught stir the ends of his hair with icy fingers. He was a small, fair-haired child, and dressed from head to toe in black he seemed today smaller and frailer than ever.

It was his seventh birthday, and a week before Christmas. And every year, for as long as he could remember, on this day the house and its occupants had been shuttered in mourning. It was the anniversary of his mother's death.

She had died because of him. No-one ever said it like that, not where he could hear them, but all the same Raoul knew it was true. His mother had been too old for any more babies — why, his big brother Philippe was a grown-up man — but all the same Raoul had come. And his mother the Comtesse had died of it.

Sometimes he wished he didn't have a birthday. Then they could look forward to Christmas like other people, instead of creeping round the great empty house every year trying not to remember. Raoul himself couldn't remember, of course. But he looked like his mother. Everyone said so.

And so he had learnt to hide himself away where his father could not see him as the old Comte paced up and down, up and down, with faded eyes that looked only into the past, and his sisters crept round corners like small grey mice. If his birthday could not be forgotten, at least he could do his best to make sure people forgot about him... and so after nursery luncheon, eaten at the little table upstairs while the grown-ups dined in state on a cold collation shrouded with gloom, he had slipped in here to the library on his own to wait for the lamps to be lighted and the endless day to come to an end.

He wished Philippe would come. His tall, splendid brother would sweep through the cobwebs like a breeze from the hills, trailing the faint, exciting scent of pomade and leather and cigars, and shedding, as always, casual kindness on the adoring small shadow that trotted in his wake. If Philippe lived with them, things would be different. But it was no secret at the chateau that the Comte and his heir didn't see eye to eye. Philippe had rooms of his own up in town. And if he paid a visit just now, at Christmas time, it would only be a few days before the shouting and the slammed doors would start... and in the end Philippe would storm out again, as he had last year, vowing never to return.

He always did, of course. But last time he hadn't come back for months.

" _Sacré_ mausoleum of a house," Raoul repeated wistfully under his breath, tugging absently at the hated black of his sleeve. It was an expression overheard from Philippe that had particularly appealed to him, and which he had been strictly forbidden by his sisters from attempting to use.

He breathed on the cold glass and watched it mist up to hide the long gravel sweep and the dark shadow of the woods beyond, with their leafless treetops against a fading sky. Perhaps it would be better, after all, if Philippe didn't come until New Year. Raoul knew his big brother had loved their mother too; he just had a different way of showing it.

And maybe he'd be able to take Raoul out riding on the old pony with the leading-rein, and Raoul could show off his new blue hacking-jacket, and they could go down to the dell where Philippe's dogs had once flushed a fox... One small finger on the misted glass traced out the figure of a stick-man with a tall hat, and he sighed.

Then jumped, as another sigh echoed his own. His sister Clémence stood behind him, hands on her hips.

"Oh, Raoul... whatever are you doing in here? I've been hunting all over for you — just look at the state of your collar. And your hair... oh, come here, child, let me tidy you up."

She laid hold of him firmly by the back of his jacket and began to set his clothes in order with a rough kindness to which Raoul submitted almost without protest. He had understood when he was still very small that if Clémence was cross, it was because she worried so much about the house and about their father. And in any case, he liked her better than his other sister, Albertine, whose idea of playing with him when she was younger had consisted of dressing him up like a great doll and trying to put flowers in his hair.

He wriggled a little and yelped as his sister began to drag the comb from her apron pocket through fair, tangled curls. But Clémence simply tightened her grip, and Raoul made a face and screwed his eyes shut. Soon they would have to go down to the chapel to pray for Mama. And the curtains would be drawn back from her portrait in the salon as they always were at this time of year, and they would all sit there in silence with the Comte looking backwards and forwards between the painted face of his wife and their small son, and in the end he would either start to drink or to weep. Last year, with Philippe, he had done both. Raoul did not know which was worse.

It was still a whole week until Christmas. If only it could be over, and spring could come.


	2. The invitation in Africa

**Chapter 2: The invitation in Africa**

The vast African sky, bright and quivering overhead, seemed to vibrate taut as a drum, and the palm-fringed coast was fit to wilt in the heat. _La Tauride_ lay at anchor in the roadstead of Assinie, tugging a little at her cables beneath a gentle onshore breeze, and the endless surf broke on the beach beyond, where a handful of pirogues lay drawn up under the sun. Another darted swiftly between the waves, guided by a few skilful strokes of the paddle from a dark-skinned native stripped to the waist. From his vantage point at the edge of the knot of officers gathered on the deck, the young Vicomte de Chagny watched it come, discreetly easing the prickle beneath the collar of his naval uniform with one finger and conscious of a certain envy.

His fair complexion resolutely refused to tan, and despite the smart moustache he'd been at some pains to cultivate, Raoul still looked younger than his years. He'd been one of the smallest boys in his training ship, and had suffered for it until he learned to hold his own; but after a childhood spent within the confines of the chateau de Chagny, the call of the sea had been strong enough to overcome any number of indignities.

He'd wanted to join the navy since he'd been twelve and fostered out to an aunt in Brest, where the Home Fleet lay, and only one other dream in his life had come close enough to rival the promise of those wide horizons. But barley-ripe hair and eyes of Northern blue formed a dream that never could be for the Vicomte de Chagny, however much they might haunt his memories, and Raoul had pledged himself never to love where he could not wed. He had plunged into his studies, come top among the cadets in his year, and been posted as a matter of course on board the frigate _La Tauride_ on passing out of the old _Borda_. His brother Philippe had influence at the Ministry and high hopes of young Raoul's future when he should return to France... and for all that he could still pass for a stripling of seventeen, Lieutenant Raoul de Chagny was a seasoned officer who had seen out his twentieth birthday some three days since.

However, since he had not seen fit to disclose this last fact to his fellow-officers, it was quite another celebration that was the subject of conversation at present.

"Christmas with palm trees." Martin Reviers wiped a trickle of sweat from his broad features and swore, with feeling. "December the twenty-first, and still hotter than August in the Midi — it's enough to make you homesick for a good hard Strasbourg frost. Coconuts and coffee beans can't hold a candle to the winter cold nipping at your fingertips and the crunch of coke underfoot when they light the stoves in the cathedral—"

"Myself, I'd swap chilblains for tropic shores any day of the year," put in Jussy, drily. Older than the rest, he'd been enlisted below-decks as a boy and made his way up to the officers' mess — as he could never forbear to mention — by dint of hard work and raw merit. "How about you, De Chagny?" There was a certain edge in his voice. "Homesick for the baronial halls — the Yule log burning in the open hearth, the boar's-head borne in with all due ceremony, and the cheery rustics serenading the Comte and Comtesse from the hall door?"

Raoul flushed up painfully beneath the sunburn, but kept his temper. "My mother the Comtesse died when I was born, monsieur, and my father when I was twelve years old. My brother the new Comte has always preferred to live in Paris... and for myself, I have never much cared for the season. It is not, you will understand, one of happy memories where my family are concerned. Now, if you will excuse me—"

Jussy's lean cheeks had taken on a dull tinge of crimson in their turn as glances exchanged among the group showed a clear sense that this time he had gone too far, and Raoul was reasonably certain of being able to keep his clenched fists to himself; but it would do no harm in any case for someone to check that the anchor cables were not chafing at the bitts, and for the next hour the watch was still nominally his.

He ducked past Reviers with more haste than courtesy, heading forward along the deck. But he had taken no more than a couple of strides when he was stopped short in his tracks by the captain's voice.

"Good news, _mes gars_!" _Capitaine de vaisseau_ Thierry Côtard was not one to stand upon ceremony; if he had noted the brief discord amongst his officers, he was wise enough to give no sign of it. Raoul remembered, suddenly, the pirogue that he had seen making its way out from shore, and the rippling muscles of the paddler he glimpsed now beyond the captain's shoulder. There must have been a message.

"Excellent news," Côtard promised them cheerfully. "The Resident has offered to celebrate Midnight Mass for us all with his own priest up at the old fort, and invited us to take _Réveillon_ with him afterwards. I can't promise you oysters on ice, gentlemen, but we'll do our best to feast the season just as we would at home — and help bring a little corner of the mother country to this benighted continent. They'll be delighted to host us. And I'm confident"—he turned a stern eye upon the younger ensigns—"that you will be proud to comport yourselves after the manner of good Christians and honourable Frenchmen."

Jussy, looking on, curled his lip but remained silent; he was rumoured to be a freethinker. But Reviers, who had been among the chief targets of his captain's pointed stare, bubbled over, oblivious.

"A missionary Christmas? What a prime notion! Sir, is it true they've taught the blacks to sing?" He broke into an enthusiastic impromptu rendition of _"Minuit, chrétiens"_ , disclosing a pleasant drawing-room tenor that Raoul might under other circumstances have appreciated.

"As I understand it they have more ado to keep them from singing and dancing and all that juju," Côtard responded somewhat testily, cutting the singer off short. "However, Ensign, should you wish to indulge the natives with a demonstration of your prowess no doubt it would not go unappreciated."

Reviers, unabashed, shared in the general laughter at this sally, while Côtard turned to the waiting messenger, whose gleaming grin of appreciation was as broad as any. "Tell _monsieur le Résident_ that we accept, with pleasure —understood?— and I'll be ashore later to discuss the matter of those dispatches."

The native bobbed agreement, teeth flashing again at some unseen jest, and swung himself dexterously over the side and down into the slender hull of his pirogue with the enviable ease of long practice. Raoul moved to the bulwarks to watch him go, marvelling at the speed with which the frail craft shot back towards the breakers. Beyond lay Assinie, a fringe of palm-thatched huts along a sandspit at the edge of a continent, with its vast unknown hinterland of mahogany, ivory and gold. A few blocky roofs marked out the location of the French _comptoir_ , and he sighed. On Christmas Eve no doubt they would all be ferried over to the buildings at that trading post, to act out the rituals of a distant home and banquet into the small hours on whatever delicacies this coast could provide, starched collars wilting in the hot breath of an African night. It was not a prospect for which he could find it in himself to summon any great enthusiasm.

"Cheer up, De Chagny." Jussy had come up behind him. His dry tone was not without fellow-feeling. "There's a rumour below decks we're being posted out East — odds are, come February we'll be in Cochinchina."

And all this will seem no more than a dream, Raoul thought, with a sudden longing for the open sea. Maybe they'd see out Lent in the mouth of the Mekong, or make soundings off Cap St-Jacques; just at present he had rather look forward to anything other than the spectacle of Christmas re-enacted in West Africa.


	3. The girl at the opera

**Chapter 3: The girl at the opera**

Comte Philippe looked up, with his fine smile, as his younger brother came rather sleepily into the breakfast-room. They had returned somewhat late from the Duchesse de Montémar's ball the night before, and despite the Comte's best attempts Raoul was not yet accustomed to keeping society hours.

His ship had returned to France at the end of September by way of Cape Horn, and the young man had been sent on leave with a commendation from his commanding officer that had been hailed by his brother with an almost embarrassing afflux of pride. But weeks of leave had extended to a month, and then one month into two, before he learned his next posting. The de Chagny influence could not move mountains; but it could, it transpired, achieve miracles where officialdom was concerned, especially when wielded by one so adept in the art as Comte Philippe. The Vicomte had been assigned aboard one of the most sought-after missions of the year: the relief effort in search of the d'Artois expedition, dispatched to explore the Arctic Circle some three years earlier and now overdue.

Raoul had been down to pay his respects to his new commanding officer and observe the work being done on the _Requin_ , the ship that was to carry the rescue party northwards into the ice. But the reinforcements to her timbers could not be made in a hurry — d'Artois' vessel, the _Colombe_ , was already feared lost to the steely grip of the frozen pack-ice, and the Minister of Marine would not sanction the risk of sending another ship ill-prepared for polar waters — and men and supplies on this scale took time to assemble. It had been made politely apparent to Raoul that inexperienced junior officers were, at this stage of the proceedings, simply in the way.

So he had gone back to Paris on extended furlough to lodge with his brother there; and the Comte, with the calm self-possession of a true Parisian, had set himself to educate his gauche young charge in everything with which a gentleman should be acquainted in the great metropolis. Being both very fond of Raoul and genuinely proud of him, he had taken pains that they should be seen together everywhere, from the course at Longchamps to the most exclusive entertainments, and that the Vicomte should be presented to everyone who mattered.

Whatever his time at sea had done for Raoul's confidence in commanding men, alas, it had done nothing at all to improve his shyness when dealing with society. Faced with what had at times seemed an endless succession of formidable old dowagers and pertly flirtatious young misses, he had suffered agonies of tongue-tied embarrassment until Philippe took pity on him and steered him away. His brother's knowing and worldly friends were little better, and the conversation of the young sophisticates of his own generation — polished men-about-town, all of them — left him only with a painful conviction both of his own naïvety and of being a source of general amusement.

It lacked but two days to Christmas, and in the space of the last month he had made the acquaintance of more people than he had ever met before in the whole of his life, but not a single friend. And the one familiar face with whom he had sought to renew acquaintance seemed to want nothing to do with him.

That rejection still hurt. He bit his lip and did his best to return his brother's smile as the Comte rose from the breakfast table to greet him; it was not a subject he was eager to discuss with an elder brother, however affectionate.

"Come here." Philippe embraced him briskly on both cheeks, then held him out at arm's length with a firm grip on his shoulders, surveying him fondly.

"Stand up straight, Raoul; you're a Chagny, after all, with nothing to be shy about. You've got the family good looks — though I say it myself," he added with the faintest of deprecating smiles—"and all you're lacking is a bit of breadth across the shoulders to convince Madame de Lael and her fellow old tabbies that you won't break in half if the wind blows the wrong way. And that'll come."

He ran an approving hand across unseen lean muscle that was the relic of a year of shipboard life, and released his brother with a final pat on the shoulder that was more akin to a friendly buffet. Flushing at the compliment, Raoul rocked a little on his feet but withstood the blow.

The years had been kind to Philippe de Chagny, and if he was no longer the golden young Apollo who had won a small brother's dazzled admiration, he was still a splendidly-built man in his prime. And at present, with his rather forbidding eyes warmed by amusement and appreciation, he showed to his best advantage. Raoul, whose own rather delicate good looks had been nothing but a source of discomfort since adolescence, experienced a familiar envy. It was hard to feel either adult or dignified when you turned twenty-one and all the dowagers of the quarter persisted in mourning over you as a frail blossom not long for this world.

Madame de Lael must have been the stately Roman-nosed matron who had cornered Philippe at last night's ball; Raoul placed her, with a jolt of memory, as mother-in-law to the Marquis d'Audray. Which made her almost a relative, much to his distaste... for it was the Marquis' cousin Maurice d'Audray whom Clémence had just married, after three years of widowhood.

Black had undoubtedly suited his sister, Raoul thought with ruefully-acquired worldly wisdom. And with adult hindsight he suspected that in consequence she had worn it rather longer than affection for a wastrel husband would have dictated. But fate — and a drunken fall from an uncontrollable horse — had set her free to reign as a serenely beautiful widow and, in time, to marry again, and Raoul, whom she had done her best to mother despite the cost of his birth, could not begrudge her one moment of her late-found happiness. Still, it had been strange to come to Paris and find he had a whole parcel of new relations he'd only just met...

Her choice of husband wasn't the only thing he'd found changed in coming to Paris, though. And with that reminder of his own confused unhappiness Raoul's thoughts came full circle yet again, as so often in the past two weeks. It wasn't Clémence's marriage that had hurt — indeed, this wasn't a question of marriage at all, he told himself adamantly, for that at least was out of the question. But on the stage of the Opéra he'd seen Christine again after all these years, Christine whose memory had haunted him for so long, and in that first unthinking moment of recognition he could have sworn she'd seen him too.

So why would she not speak to him, or even meet his eye? And how had she grown so heartbreakingly beautiful across the years that they had been apart — a beauty that made of his own shyness a hopeless barrier between them?

He'd never forgotten her. But he'd never really expected to see her again; the bittersweet image he'd held of her had been of the pretty, fair-haired child with whom his aunt had permitted him to run wild, or of the slender, half-formed girl to whom he'd made his final goodbyes by the roadside at Perros. He'd pressed a hot clumsy kiss to her hand and fled, to bury himself in his studies and try to forget. And it seemed she'd done the same.

It had always been her father's dream that some day his daughter would achieve the recognition a fickle public had never accorded him. Old Daaé had been brought to France from Sweden and presented by his sponsor as a self-taught prodigy, but the simple country fiddler had failed to win the hearts of a sophisticated Parisian crowd. When Raoul had known him, he'd been homesick and withdrawn, endlessly retelling the tales of his own country and promising Christine that she, too, would be granted music by a heavenly muse.

They'd been children, young enough to believe without question that success came as a gift from on high... but Raoul was old enough now to understand just how much work and training it took for someone like Christine Daaé to take her place in the cast of the Opéra de Paris, despite the social gulf it set between them. And Christine was no longer the coltish child from whom he'd parted. She was as old as he was, grown to a woman's stature and beauty, with self-possession of a kind that utterly deserted him when he tried to approach her.

She'd recognised him, Raoul told himself again stubbornly. In that moment when she had looked up from the stage and their eyes had met — surely he was not imagining that their eyes had met? — he'd seen joy there and a share in his own uncomplicated delight. But by the time he had freed himself from Philippe and his brother's guests in the box that night, it had been too late to go in search of her after the performance.

He'd bought a ticket in the stalls out of his month's half-pay — meagre enough in all conscience, but then Philippe had always covered everything he might need — and slipped back to the Opéra for the next performance to hear her again. The days between had been spent in a queer half-acknowledged state of excitement; he'd had a hundred questions he wanted to ask her the moment they met, and had spent so long trying to choose between them that even his brother had remarked on his distraction.

And then she'd cut him dead.

Not once, but twice, when he'd tried again last week; she could not possibly have failed to see him, but she'd passed by without so much as a glance, those glorious eyes turned aside without a hint of recognition as if he were no more than the dust beneath her feet.

The first time, he'd thought maybe she'd misunderstood his intentions. Perhaps he'd thrust himself forward too boldly, like other importunates he'd seen crowding at the heels of performers. Perhaps in his evening dress she'd taken him for nothing more than some philandering dandy, and hastened her step to avoid insult. Perhaps it was the moustache, hitherto half-hidden by the darkness of his brother's box; it made him look older and more sophisticated, he was sure of it, but then perhaps she had not recognised the boy she once knew? He had almost shaved it off on the spot — but that would have drawn Philippe's attention to the whole affair in a way he could not bring himself to face.

Instead he'd gone back again determined that this time he would speak to her, this time he would end the whole misunderstanding and make everything right between them... and at the last minute his nerve had failed him, and he'd stood there stricken to silence as her eyes slid over him with bruising indifference.

And she no longer sang as he remembered. He tried to suppress that disloyal thought, but it was true. He'd known her as an untutored child who raised her voice in pure joy at the world around them. Now she was a polished artiste from the Conservatoire, and yet somehow her voice no longer spoke to him as it once had. It was as if some long-settled unhappiness had cut her off from the world that had once meant so much, and when she sang she was simply going through the motions.

If only she would talk to him, Raoul told himself disingenuously. They'd once confided all their childish troubles to one another. Surely he could convince her...

"Woolgathering again, Raoul?"

It dawned upon Raoul in a wave of hot embarrassment that he was still standing in the middle of the breakfast-room while his brother had resumed his repast. He had not heard a word of anything that Philippe had been saying.

With a muttered apology, he took his seat opposite the Comte, and let the manservant pour him coffee as Philippe addressed himself to the pile of morning post.

"Barthès, de Tailles, Verger Frères: doesn't fall due until the ninth..." His brother's long fingers were sorting missives and bills with practised ease. "Ardmann, de Menerie — frightful woman, I certainly shall not — ah, here's a note from Clémence."

He unfolded the sheet with a smile and scanned through for a moment in silence before glancing up again at Raoul. "The d'Audrays are holding a gathering tomorrow for Christmas: a small family affair. Albertine will be there, and the little ones, and Clémence assures me that Maurice d'Audray will be delighted to host us both. Would you care to go?"

To leave Paris, now? And it would be Chagny all over again. A memory of those grim family gatherings caught in Raoul's throat, and something of what he was feeling must have shown in his face. Philippe swept aside his murmur of reluctant assent, and pinned him with the clear gaze that had always seen too much.

"Forgive me, brother, that was thoughtless. You've never cared for this time of year, have you?"

"You know why." It came out in a graceless mumble that was all Raoul could manage, and he dropped his gaze, anticipating reprimand.

The Comte sighed. "You know I've always believed that our father was wrong— very wrong. Raoul—"

But whatever he had been about to say, he cut himself off, evidently recollecting the impassive servants, and went on briskly.

"In any case, it's time we celebrated your birthday for once. What would you say to dinner at the Café Anglais instead, just the two of us, and then we go on to catch the second act of _Aïda_? I hear La Carlotta is in splendid form"—the smile in his voice took on an ironic note—"and it seems our trip to the Opéra the other week was quite the success; you've scarcely failed to bring every conversation round to it since."

Raoul could feel himself scarlet to the ears. He dared not look up.

"Could we... is there a chance we could... go backstage?" He had never sought to enquire too closely into Philippe's private life; but subscription to an opera box brought with it certain privileges, and it was well known the Comte was no stranger on the stair to the dressing-rooms. If he, Raoul, could just follow Christine one night— get a word with her alone—

He ventured a glance across the table, and caught a fleeting look of surprise on his brother's face, as if he'd just had a glimpse of silk stocking beneath a nun's habit.

"If you're sure..." Philippe said slowly. "Well, we'll see."

Raoul made no reply but resolved silently to insist at every opportunity. Why would no-one ever take him seriously? He thought again of Christine, with an alien ache that he could not understand.


	4. The boat on the lake

**Chapter 4: The boat on the lake**

In Sweden the winter had come early this year, and cold, and the deep pool above their house had been frozen over since the start of December, with the stream that flowed down through it silenced in its bright chatter over the stones outside the back door. But two days ago Raoul had been woken in the night by the first faint tinkle of the thaw beneath the eaves, and sensed a change in what he had come to know as the hard tang of frost in the air.

He had slipped cautiously from beneath the quilts, avoiding the cradle, and gone to kneel by the tiny window, listening for the murmur of moving water. He heard nothing, and Christine turned over in sleepy complaint as her husband slid back to share the warmth of their bed, shivering; but in the morning when she went out to rinse the pans the stream had begun to chuckle quietly again between ice-fringed banks, and when Raoul ventured out cautiously onto the tarn it was no longer safe for skating.

Now, on Christmas Day, the ice-sheet up there was all but melted, with only a stubborn promontory jutting out from the far bank beneath the trees. Remnants of snow still clung to the tussocks of the rough grass, and on the distant mountains an unbroken blanket of white gave promise of the colder weather yet to come. A brisk young wind from the east — in the days of the windjammers, the old hands would have called it little more than a breeze to which every scrap of canvas must be set — had chased away the clouds, and the midday sun was making its brief unseasonal appearance, gilding the ripples that chased across the water. A sharp haze of wood-smoke drifted up from the chimney of the little house whose roof was just visible below, snatches of reassuring scent that signified hot soup and warm dry stockings awaiting them by the fire.

But the Christmas-noontide revellers were at present far from ready to return. Raoul scrambled breathlessly from slope to slope around the steep banks of the tarn, laughing, while small Alain on his shoulders squealed with excitement and waved his stick. And out on the bright water the brand-new boat heeled to a gust, steadied, and came racing back towards the shallows of the stream-mouth with all the stubbornness of the beautiful self-willed lady that she was.

Alain had been struck speechless by the splendour of the gift, and even Christine, who had been in on the secret, had gasped when the string was finally untied, the paper pulled away, and the little _Astrid_ revealed in all her neat-painted glory. Raoul remembered with a certain tinge of guilt his wife's murmured enquiry as to which of her two boys it had truly been intended for; well, it could be shared jointly between himself and Alain until the child was big enough to sail it on his own, Raoul resolved now firmly, and splashed hastily into the shallows, guided by his son's frantic urgings, to rescue the craft from certain wreck.

"Turn her — turn her, Alain! Use your stick... that's right, quick, push the bows round..."

Aided by the improvised turning pole, the _Astrid_ hesitated, pointed up into the wind, and began to gather speed on the other tack, out into the safety of deep water.

"Dada, Dada, she's going to hit the ice!"

A stronger gust of wind had laid the toy yacht over on her beam ends and threatened to send her yawing round into a fresh peril; Alain's arms around his neck tightened in a death-grip of panic, and Raoul, whose boots were beginning to leak, stumbled and almost sent the two of them flying. He tried to calm the boy.

"I think she'll be all right, Alain. Look."

The _Astrid_ was not as grand as the boats in his childhood picture-books, model yachts whose masts were as tall as their lucky owners and whose decks were wide enough to seat a whole crew of lifelike sailor-dolls, dressed by loving sisters and threatened in illustrations by the inky jaws of implausibly large pike. But Young Sigge the fowler's son had carved her for him over painstaking months while Raoul himself laboured over the sewing of her suits of sails, as clumsy as any child with her first sampler. And he and Sigge had melted down Old Sigge's swanshot to weight her rudder according to the plans he'd found in a tattered Swedish magazine. He waited now with bated breath.

The heavy rudder, swinging as the boat heeled, held her for a moment true to her course, and Raoul let out a whoop of triumph to rival that of his son. Then, with all the perversity of the inanimate, _Astrid_ swung up into the wind, lurched for a moment with flapping sails, spun neatly on her heel and headed directly for the obstacle of the half-rotten ice. In a moment or two she lay helplessly pinned and rocking against the edge, the motion of her bows sawing out a notch that held her ever more inexorably embayed.

A very few minutes sufficed to demonstrate, despite Alain's pleas, that not even the longest stick Raoul could find, deployed at the farthest extent of his arm and from either bank, could possibly reach the child's new toy in a rescue operation. Looking back and forth between that hopeless ugly chafing against the ice and the manfully dry eyes of the small son trailing at his heels, Raoul cursed under his breath and began to remove his coat.

"Raoul de Chagny, don't you even think of anything so foolish!"

Christine had come up, unseen, from the house to find them, and had taken in the scene at a glance. The baby in her arms was wrapped up so warmly that only a little button nose was visible.

It had been a long time since Raoul had seen her as angry with him as she was now; there was a certain shamefaced nostalgia in it that took him back to the days of their courtship and the clumsy jealous boy he'd been. It had taken her three months of increasing fear for his life and her future before she'd been able to trust him enough to confide in him, and disaster had followed close upon the heels of that confession. Small wonder that in the early months of their marriage — exiled and adrift in a land she had known only in childhood and he from her father's tales, and with old Madame Valerius rambling in her mind — they had clung together with a timid fragility as if one harsh word between them might shatter their world once more. When his pale and shrinking wife had found the courage to snap at him out of sheer exhaustion, that first Christmas, he did not know which of them it had shocked the most.

He couldn't even remember the reason for the quarrel; in his awkwardness and his inexperience at their new life, he had given her more than cause enough. Perhaps he had knocked over the milk-can, or let the fire go out, or allowed himself to be cheated at the market by tightfisted farm-wives with nothing but scorn for a foreigner. But when Christine had flown out at him for his folly just as she had once done when he sought to meddle in her affairs, it had hurt all the more for being not only deserved but unexpected. He'd been stung into defensive bluster; and from there they had rapidly descended into childish insults and wild accusations. He'd laid at her door everything from his struggles in learning Swedish to his own guilt over Philippe, of whose murder he had not even known until weeks after that terrible night. He'd learned only by chance, in the news from Paris — in the paper that brought a reluctant duty of burial — that the brother with whom he had quarrelled was dead, with Raoul himself as the chief suspect, and the shadow of the knowledge had lain dark over their first year.

Philippe, who had been the one beloved constant in his life for so long, was gone, if not dead by his hand then by his doing, and they would never be reconciled. His brother had died believing the woman Raoul loved to be a shallow, scheming minx, and had done all he could to split them apart. The implacable enemy who had all but taken Raoul's own life had on that same evening with those same murderous hands set him free from the Comte's opposition... and the cost of that unasked freedom had been more, sometimes, than Raoul could bear.

He'd flung his brother's death in Christine's face, and she in turn had laid bare every damning trace of his own culpability which silent self-accusation had already presented to him. He'd wept and stormed like the half-grown boy he'd still been, and ended by slamming out of the house. Hours later he'd come back, ashamed, to find her curled face-down on their bed and drained with sobbing; they'd found comfort in one another's arms and made unspoken amends.

But the world had not ended, and Christine had begun to take on her old colour and courage again. By the time Alain was born, at summer's end that year, they'd learned to argue without quarrelling and to quarrel without rancour; with that reassurance, laughter had begun slowly to come back into their lives. And watching his first-born son grow year by year from unformed infancy into a stubborn, fair-haired, unmistakable de Chagny, Raoul had felt the tight grip of guilt at Philippe's fate begin at last to fade.

Christine's eyes were blazing now in uncomplicated anger, though, her face flushed and indignant at an idiotic husband. "Raoul, what on earth are you thinking? This isn't summertime at Perros — that water comes straight down from the snowline. If you plunge in after that boat of yours, you'll freeze through to the bone before I can get you back in front of the fire. And you a sailor! Haven't you any sense at all?"

She interposed herself physically between him and the ice, baby and all, barring his path like a small fierce Valkyrie, and began to push him away. Laughing, Raoul wrapped his arms about his wife and daughter, holding them tight. He felt the warm brush of Christine's furs as she laid her head against him.

The baby made a sleepy protesting noise and unfurled small fingers from within her nest of shawls. Raoul captured the waving hand in the depths of one glove and let it grasp onto a finger of his own, marvelling all over again at the determined grip. It was hard to remember that Alain had ever been this small.

"We'll get the _Astrid_ back for you," he promised his son, who was still gazing disconsolately out at the little yacht in her vain attempts to proceed. "If she doesn't come in of her own accord, I'll get Old Sigge to bring his punt up to the tarn this evening."

"You swear?"

"I swear," Raoul told Alain gravely, and got a beaming look of relief in response. He could feel Christine's chuckle against his breast.

"We should get him out of those wet mittens and warmed up indoors," she murmured, but made no move from within the circle of his arms. After a moment or two she turned her face up to his, pulling back a little when he took this for an invitation to an embrace. She held him off, searching his gaze with the ghost of old anxieties in her own.

"Are you happy here, Raoul? Truly?"

Below them the steep-pitched roof of their little house could be glimpsed over the corner of the path, each new shingle on its patchwork of moss a tiny personal triumph where he had clung on to hammer them home in the autumn. The slopes of the valley stretched away, fringed in dark and in hazy silver by hardy pine and birch; beyond was the cluster of buildings that marked their nearest neighbours in the village, calm, good-natured folk who laughed off his halting Swedish and had asked no questions. Somewhere close by the spire of the little Lutheran church lay the grave of Madame Valerius, who had found rest at last in the native soil which she had yearned after for so long. The banks of the tarn were golden in the afternoon light. And overhead the Northern sky was wide and ice-blue, shading into clear depths of beauty that the chimneys of Paris would never know.

In the summer it had rung with music like the arch of a great cathedral, as Christine sang full-throated for pure joy and the face of the waters gave back each shining note. It seemed to him now, as she soothed the child in her arms, crooning quietly, that even that softest of tunes awoke an answering shimmer above.

"I was never happier anywhere but here, or on any Christmas but this," he told her quietly as a pledge between them, and felt the absolute truth of it strike through him for an instant to the core. He trembled, and knew the quiver that ran through her for a response.

"Dada, look!" Alain tugged at the skirts of his father's coat, oblivious, and Raoul came ruefully down to earth and a reality of a different sort. "Dada—"

It was a sight worth seeing, for all that. A fluke of wind from the trees had caught the _Astrid_ 's bows, out on the water, and sent her drifting clear far enough to turn her.

And now she came gliding back across the tarn towards them, tangled and battered but whole. Raoul felt his eyes fill unaccountably as he waded out one last time, reaching down to gather that weight into his arms and welcome her home.

"Here, Alain. Careful now — mind how you go." He knelt to pass the burden. "We'll set her right for you this evening."

"While it's still Christmas?" Alain looked up a little anxiously at the sun, already perceptibly lower in the sky.

Raoul nodded. "While it's still Christmas. The best of all Christmases."

"Best ever," Alain assured him with the unquestioning confidence of the young. He began to carry the boat back to the house unasked.

"Good boy," Christine called after him, tucking the shawls back around the sleeping baby and preparing to descend the steep path in her turn. Raoul slipped an arm about her to offer support, and held her close.

"Never happier on any Christmas but this," he told her again, kissing the soft hair at her temple. "Or with anyone, anywhere, but you."


End file.
